Book Launch: Rethinking Conscientious Objection in Health Care
On Tuesday 24 June 2025, the Health Law and Ethics Network and the Hallmark Research Initiative on Reproductive Justice were please to launch, Rethinking Conscientious Objection in Health Care (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Alberto Giubilini, Udo Schuklenk, Francesca Minerva, and Julian Savulescu.
In this seminar, author, Julian Savulescu discussed the book, with commentary provided by Professor Louise Keogh (Chair, Hallmark Research Initiative on Reproductive Justice, University of Melbourne), Professor Tony Coady (University of Melbourne) and Ms Casey Haining (University of Melbourne/Queensland University of Technology). The seminar was chaired by Associate Professor Chris Gyngell, Melbourne Medical School and Director of the Biomedical Ethics Research Group at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute.
In his presentation at the launch, Professor Savulescu argued that conscientious objection represents the imposition of a doctor’s values on the patient. Values ought to direct medical practice, but these must be ethical values based on respect for autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. When a doctor’s values conform to these four principles, they represent actionable values. When they conflict with them, they are non-actionable values. Professor Savulescu presented several arguments against allowing conscientious objection, with several examples. However, he finally concluded that a harm reduction approach may justify limited respect for some conscientious objection, provided there are sufficient providers willing to offer medical treatments and enhancements which fall within the scope of medicine.
View the event recording
About the panel
Professor Julian Savelescu is the Chen Su Lan Centennial Professor in Medical Ethics and Director for the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS). He is an award-winning ethicist and moral philosopher trained in neuroscience, medicine, and philosophy who has held the Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford since 2002. He is a Visiting Professorial Fellow in Biomedical Ethics at Murdoch Children’s Research institute and Distinguished International Visiting Professor in Law at the University of Melbourne where he leads the Biomedical Ethics Research Group. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bucharest.
Associate Professor Christopher Gyngell is a Team Leader in Biomedical Ethics at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne in the Department of Paediatrics. He has a background in genetics and corporate ethics. Chris’ research explores the ethical implications of novel technologies, including gene editing, AI, genomics, and stem cell therapies. He has over 70 peer-reviewed publications in a diverse range of ethics, philosophy, science, and medical journals. Chris is committed to public engagement, frequently contributing to public discussions and policy debates on the ethical aspects of biomedical advancements. He is a Director of the Melbourne Health Law and Ethics Network.
Professor Louise Keogh is Chair of the Hallmark Research Initiative in Reproductive Justice at the University of Melbourne. She is a health sociologist and qualitative researcher, bringing sociological, ethical and legal analysis to contemporary, controversial medical technologies, including abortion, voluntary assisted dying and genetics.
Professor Tony Coady is one of Australia's best-known philosophers. He has an outstanding international reputation for his writings on epistemology and on political violence and political ethics. His book Testimony: a Philosophical Study (OUP, 1992) has been particularly influential and more recently he published Morality and Political Violence (CUP, 2008) In 1990 he founded and became director of the Centre for Philosophy and Public Issues at the University of Melbourne, the first centre in Australia to be concerned with broad issues of philosophy and public affairs. CPPI later became absorbed into CAPPE where Coady was Deputy-Director for its first four years. In 2005, he gave the Uehiro Lectures on Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, which were subsequently published in 2008 by Oxford University Press under the title, Messy Morality: the Challenge of Politics. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. In 2012 He was a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford and delivered the Leverhulme lectures there on "Religion and Politics".
Casey Haining is a research fellow at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne and the Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology. She is an interdisciplinary researcher who actively researches in the voluntary assisted dying space. She has conducted and analysed over 100 interviews across Victoria and Western Australia. She was the appointed research fellow to carry out the statutory review of the Western Australian VAD legislation and was a legal writer for the mandatory VAD training for Queensland. Outside of VAD, she also has research interests in end-of-life care more broadly, sexual and reproductive health and genetics.